Chinese team arrives to design Dhedre-Lendanda tunnel

KATHMANDU: JUNE 24 – A team including the project manager of Poly Changda Engineering Company Limited of China, which has been awarded the contract for the construction of Package No. 2 Dhedre-Lendanda Tunnel under the Kathmandu-Terai-Madhesh Expressway under construction under the management of Nepal Army, has arrived in Kathmandu.

An expert team of the company arrived in Kathmandu on Wednesday on a chartered flight from Guangzhou under the coordination of the Nepal Army at a time when transportation was being hampered due to the risk of infection with COVID-19. The team that came for the main work of tunnel design includes a 14-member expert group including company project manager and tunnel, bridge and road engineer, said Nepal Army spokesperson Santosh Ballabh Poudel.

An agreement was reached with Polly Changda on April 14 to construct the Dhedre-Lendanda tunnel in Makwanpur under the Kathmandu-Terai-Madhesh Expressway, a priority of national pride, at a cost of Rs. 28.53 billion. The team will speed up the design work by setting up an office. The group of the company in Nepal has already started the survey work after visiting the place.

Polly Changda’s team has come to Kathmandu showing determination and readiness to complete the design work within six months of the agreement. The agreement stipulates that the tunnel should be completed within three years of the design being completed. The Army had signed contract agreements with China State Construction Engineering Corporation Limited for Package No. 1 of the Expressway and Poly Changda Engineering Company Limited for Package No. 2.

An agreement has been reached to build the first package at a cost of Rs. 21.3 billion. The first package has one and the second package has two small tunnels. The agreement was signed by Bikash Pokharel, chief assistant on behalf of the expressway, Su Yan, executive director for package number 1, and Zhu Tingyu Barbara, chief project manager of package number 2, on behalf of the construction company.

As per the agreement, the construction company has been given six months design period and three years construction time. Of the 11 clusters built by the army to complete the project within the stipulated time, the contracts of the remaining nine clusters are in the process of progress. After that, in parallel, all the work will pick up speed at once, said Poudel.

After the construction of the expressway based on the standards of the Asian Highway, the distance of road transport from the Central and Eastern Terai to the Kathmandu Valley will be significantly reduced. The construction of a fast highway from Khokna in Lalitpur to Nijgadh in Bara on the East-West Highway is expected to transform the country’s economic development and prosperity. – RSS